Robert Clary
| Robert Clary | |
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 Clary in 1953. |
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| Born | March 1, 1926 Paris, France |
Robert Clary (born Robert Max Widerman; March 1, 1926) is a French-born American actor, published author, and lecturer, best known for his role in the television sitcom Hogan's Heroes as Corporal LeBeau.
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[edit] Early life and career
Clary was the youngest of 14 children. At the age of twelve, he began a career singing professionally. In 1942, because he was Jewish, he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp, Ottmuth. He was later sent to Blechhammer, Gross Rosen, and finally Buchenwald where he was liberated on 11 April 1945. Twelve other members of his immediate family were sent to Auschwitz. Clary was the only survivor.[1][2] When he returned to Paris after the war, he was ecstatic when he found that some of his siblings had not been taken away and had survived the Nazi occupation of France.
Clary returned to the entertainment business and began making songs that not only became popular in France, but in the United States as well. He came to the U.S. in October 1949. One of Clary's first American appearances was a French language comedy skit on The Ed Wynn Show in 1950. Clary later met Merv Griffin and Eddie Cantor. This eventually led to Clary meeting Cantor's daughter, Natalie Cantor Metzger, whom he married in 1965. Cantor later got Clary a spot on the Colgate Comedy Hour. In the mid-1950s, he appeared on NBC's The Martha Raye Show and on CBS's Appointment with Adventure, a dramatic anthology series.
Clary's comedic skills were quickly recognized by Broadway, where he appeared in several popular musicals including New Faces of 1952, which was produced as a film in 1954. In 1952, he appeared in the film Thief of Damascus which also starred Paul Henreid and Lon Chaney Jr. In 1958, he guest starred on NBC's The Gisele MacKenzie Show.
[edit] LeBeau on Hogan's Heroes
In 1965, Clary was offered the role of Corporal Louis LeBeau on a new TV sitcom called Hogan's Heroes, and he accepted the role when the pilot sold. The series was set in a German POW camp during World War II, and Clary played one of the prisoners, who ran an underground Resistance unit from inside the camp.
After his stint on Hogan's Heroes, Clary appeared in a handful of feature films with World War II themes including the made-for-television film, Remembrance of Love about the Holocaust. Clary also made notable appearances on Days of our Lives and The Young and the Restless, where he played Pierre Roulland from 1973 to 1975.
Clary appeared in the 1975 film The Hindenburg which dramatized a fictional plot to blow up the Nazi airship after it arrived at the Lakehurst, New Jersey Air Station. His character was a showman/escape artist who hoped to use the airship in one of his shows.
[edit] References
- ^ The Buchenwald Report, prepared and finished three weeks after the liberation of Buchenwald by the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force; first published in its entirety by Westview Press, with translation by David A. Hackett, 1999.
- ^ Go-star.com "Robert Clary"
[edit] External links
- The Official Robert Clary Website
- Robert Clary at the Internet Movie Database
- Robert Clary at AllRovi
- Robert Clary at the TCM Movie Database
- Interview with Clary about his experiences being arrested by the Germans during World War II - Filmed when the C-SPAN School Bus visited the Simon Wiesenthal Center Library & Archives, aired February 9, 1999
